23 Bullets
by aristocraticartist
Summary: Your roommate is psychic. She can tell Cisco is exactly your type, and she is really sick of digging shrapnel out of your body, so perhaps ending up in the STAR Labs medbay was the best thing to happen to you this week.


Authors note: This is the longest thing i have written in one sitting since middle school. wow. anyways, i hope you like cisco, because there is definitely more cisco.

Cisco Ramon skidded to a halt in the medbay, his sneakers squeaking against the floor as he ran into the room. Whatever he was going to say was instantly forgotten as he saw the patient in the bed.

"Wow. Hey. Uh Cait, why is there a hot girl sleeping in here that I do not know the name of?" Caitlin was washing her hands, and she shushed him. The redhead flicked water at Cisco, which made him frown comically.

"Seriously though, I thought we weren't supposed to bring civilians."

"She's a metahuman, Cisco. She tried to help Barry against Freeze Frame but she got shot, so she needs to rest for a while."

Cisco noticed a dish of bloody bullets on the table. An eyebrow was raised, and Caitlin rolled her eyes. Quietly, and carefully, she went over to the girl and pushed the neckline of her hospital gown aside, revealing bloody pits that Cisco could see knitting themselves together with golden energy.

"woah." He whispered, leaning closer and earning being pulled away by the ear.

"Like I said before, she is resting."

"Okay, okay, fine. That's really cool tho."

Cisco stared at her for a few more seconds before moving off to presumably find her social media and stalk her a little bit.

When you woke up, every inch of your body was in pain. You groaned and moved to sit up, albeit incredibly painfully, but a petite woman in a pencil skirt gasped and stood up from a chair on the other side of the room.

"Nonono, your abdominal muscles are still probably full of holes, don't sit up!" She insisted. You let yourself relax, but put your eyes to work studying your environment.

"Um. I hate to intrude, but where am I?" The obvious question. You had many others, of course, but they weren't exactly forming properly in your brain.

"You are at STAR Labs! I'll explain later, you have a pretty bad concussion and I don't want to strain you." The redheaded woman chirped. She handed you a remote, which you quickly figured out was for the bed you were in. Sitting up was much easier with the support of the bed, and you got a better look at the room. It was clean and modern, and you could see other people through a huge window a few meters away.

"I mean. Besides the awful pain nearly everywhere else in my body, I feel fine." You mused. The bowl of bullets caught your eye, and the memories flooded back to you about the fight mere hours earlier.

"Oh. That's why there's the awful pain. Alright then." You laughed a little, but instantly regretted that decision.

"Oh, so you know?" The woman asked, sitting next to you.

"Why would I jump in front of a man with a semi-automatic weapon if I didn't?" You pulled up the STAR Labs t-shirt to observe the damage. They were nearly healed on the inside, but you knew they would probably form pockmarked scars.

"How many slugs did you pull out?"

"23. One broke your collarbone." She promptly stood up and brushed off her skirt.

"I am so sorry, I'm forgetting all of my manners! I am Doctor Caitlin Snow. It is a pleasure to meet you." She extended a perfectly manicured hand to shake, and you did just that.

"I'm (y/n). Thanks for patching me up. Did the guy I threw myself in front of live?"

"Yes, thanks to your heroics, he made it out just fine. And even though it scared the hell out of him, The Flash definitely appreciated your help." Caitlin moved to rearrange some things to clear a table for your things, and a piece of paper sliced open her finger. She yelped in surprise. You sat up a little further, but winced.

"Hey, come here. Lemme show you something cool Dr. Caitlin Snow." She giggled at your enthusiasm, but walked towards you. You took her sliced finger and encased it in your hands. Golden light shined from the cracks between your fingers, and when you pulled your hands away, Caitlin's skin was unmarked. She was rendered speechless, staring at her finger like you had just told her it was worth ten thousand dollars.

"That is amazing!" She squealed, her face lighting up like times square at Christmas. Caitlin ran out of the room, yelling things along the lines of 'look what she can do' and 'this is so amazing' and the like. You smiled.

Always a cool party trick, using your own energy to heal others.

Caitlin dragged two other people into the room, young men with confused faces. One of them, you noted, had very nice hair. You were a little jealous.

"Oh thank goodness, you're awake." The one with shorter hair rushed over to you, taking your hand and smiling. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I got shot 23 times. But it's not the first nearly fatal injury I've lived through this month."

"I'm Barry Allen. It's nice to meet you."

While you were talking to Barry, Caitlin was freaking out at the other one about her papercut. He didn't seem to understand.

She picked up a scalpel, unwrapping it and slicing open her palm. Both boys freaked out. Barry let go of your hand in shock, and the other one made a weird, strangled noise.

Caitlin wobbled over to you in what you had observed to be her signature gait; high heels and pencil skirts did tend to make people wobble a little bit.

"Would you mind?" She asked, holding out her wounded hand to you.

"Not at all. But, that is probably going to scar since you did it kinda deep." You responded as you did your thing. It was the boys' turn to be shocked. The room exploded into a cacophony of awe, and it made you smile.

The boy with the amazing hair came over to you and inspected your hands as if they were something he had never seen before.

"You guys think that's cool? you'd love the party trick where I put a chef knife in my thigh."

"Cisco, she's not a machine. Calm down."

"Oh. Uh. Sorry." The boy, now confirmed to be Cisco, let go of your hands.

"So uh, what now?" You asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, once you're feeling better and those bullet holes close up, you can go home!" Caitlin chirped. She pulled a screen to face you, and it had a graph on it.

"At your current rate of healing, you should be back on your feet in a few hours tops."

"Awesome. Well this is much swankier accommodations than I'm used to." You looked around, admiring the lab around you. "Usually my roommate is the one fishing foreign objects out of my body after I do stupid things. She hates it."

"Do you do stupid things often, then?" Cisco asked you. It made you laugh, and you rolled up your shirt and pointed to a few puckered, circular scars on your abdomen.

"Couple bullets, lots of knives, and one time I got blown up a little. Poor girl was picking shrapnel and melted jacket off me all night."

"Wow. You're kind of a total badass." Cisco, without thinking, reached out and rubbed a thumb over one of the scars. It tickled a little. "Yeah. Those ones you see closing up over here will look like that in the morning, if Caitlin is right." Everyone stared at the closing holes for a few seconds, including you, before you put your shirt back down.

There was an awkward silence for a few moments before an alarm sounded from a computer in the next room over. Everything, naturally, flew into chaos.

Twenty minutes later, you had learned a lot of things. You had learned that Barry Allen was the Flash, that Caitlin was Not Very Calm in times of crisis, that this new villain (Cisco named her Freeze Frame in the middle of the fight) was a huge bitch, and that Cisco was very, very hot.

By the end of it, you had shuffled out of the medbay with your IV pole, and you were looking over Caitlin's shoulder and listening to the conversations.

Freeze Frame got away, but The Flash had saved 12 people and taken in three of her gang. Barry sped back in, and you applauded. He lifted his mask off and sighed. "Great work, Flash. Don't worry, I'm good at keeping secrets. Although I can't promise my roommate won't guess it. She may or may not be actually psychic."

Nobody besides you was actually sure whether you were joking or not.

"Well I guess that can't be helped then. As long as the public doesn't know. I am so sick of her getting away from me though." Barry hissed and rolled his shoulders, stretching out what you assumed was probably bruising.

"Well hey, if you guys found my wallet when I went down, I think this little victory deserves a pizza party. I mean, I've only known you guys for like 4 hours and i've been asleep for 3 of them but you seem like a lot of fun so…" You trailed off as smiled erupted from all three faces in front of you.

Yeah, a pizza party was definitely in order.

Two hours later, Caitlin had cleared you to leave, and Cisco sat as his desk eating pizza as he watched you leave. Caitlin immediately rounded on him, standing up and marching over.

"Okay. What's wrong." She plopped herself in a closer chair, crossing her arms. Cisco's expression must have spoken for itself, because she rolled her eyes.

"Oh please, don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. You never stop flirting, but you didn't flirt with (y/n) even once when she was awake."

"Well forgive me for trying to be a gentleman to someone who just had 23 bullets taken out of their body!"

"Whatever. Fine. Don't talk to me. But you can't tell me you didn't notice her staring at you when she thought nobody was looking."

Cisco could feel the blush rising on his cheeks and he just shoved more pizza into his mouth and turned away. After thinking for a moment, he swallowed the bite and turned back to Caitlin.

"Could you possibly wash off those bullets for me? I need them for a thing." He asked, raising both eyebrows as if to tell her to not ask what.

"Sure. Just don't hurt yourself. Wouldn't want to have to call our new friend in, would we?" Caitlin teased, getting up to fulfill Cisco's request. He turned back to his computer and buried himself in his work, eating pizza and trying to push the way your skin felt beneath his fingers to the back of his head.

Meanwhile, you and your roommate were on the couch in your shared apartment as you told her the story of the day. She had bugged you so hard you had no choice but to give in, and you only had to give her the bare bones as she filled in the rest from accidentally picking your brain.

That was usually how this went, considering she was actually in fact a psychic.

"Girl you have too much danger in your life. But I don't know, this Cisco guy, sounds like he is exactly your type of sexy." You smacked her with a pillow, both of you falling into a fit of giggles.

"Yeah sure. Just be grateful you didn't have to come find me on the street and take 23 bullets out of me."

"Fair point." Your best friend sipped her glass of wine. "But you know I love you."

You raised an eyebrow at her.

"And…?"

"And I must insist that, because i love you, you have to go after this hot thing you met today." You sighed and hugged a throw pillow to your chest.

"I don't know if he even likes me."

"Well only one way to find out!"

Of course, your roommate was usually right about things of this nature. So when you found yourself in the cortex of STAR Labs the next day, you took it as a sign.

You walked into the room with a rusty kitchen knife sticking out of your back and a steady trickle of blood dripping down your jacket. All conversations stopped when you were noticed.

"Hi. I hate to be a bother, but my usual patcher-upper just left to visit family and I cannot reach this thing to get it out of me." Caitlin immediately rushed over to you to guide you into the medbay, and Barry went pale in the face. A man who you would later learn was Joe West made an expression you thought you would only see in cartoons.

Cisco followed you into the medbay with a horrified expression.

"What the hell happened to you girl?" He asked, helping Caitlin get you up onto the bed so she could help you.

"Some asshole tried to drag me into an alley and in the scuffle, I slipped and got this stuck in here." You gestured to your uncomfortable guest.

"You need a personal electric fence or something. Too bad you're so hot people can't resist trying to carry you away." Cisco mused, wiggling his eyebrows.

"I wouldn't be so mad if the people that do this kind of shit looked like you." You retorted, gasping in pain as Caitlin pulled the knife abruptly from your back.

"Well maybe I will have to be the one to carry you out of here. Maybe to jitters. Or out to dinner." Cisco let you squeeze his hand as Caitlin stemmed the blood flow, the pressure making you let out a painful whimper.

"I think after this I just need fries and a good nap."

"What you need to do now is take off your jacket and shirt so I can actually help you close this wound." Caitlin sternly commanded, and you groaned.

"Fries and a nap can be arranged, my lady. See you later." Cisco winked at you as Caitlin shooed him out so she could put you in a hospital gown.

"Is he like this with everyone?" You asked as the gaping gash in your back was disinfected and closed on the outside with butterfly tape.

"Only if he really likes you." She answered, checking you over for other scrapes and scratches. A small bloody patch on your face was disinfected, and a scraped knee was wrapped in gauze. Caitlin found you a t-shirt and some shorts to wear, and helped you tie your hair up.

"Well my roomie told me the way I talked about Cisco last night made him sound like some golden god, so I suppose it's a good thing my attraction is reciprocated for once."

"I'm not surprised. You are a very beautiful woman, and anyone who cannot see that is a very blind person indeed." Caitlin smiled at you as she helped you get dressed.

As you waited for the apparently promised fries, you struck up a conversation with Joe and Barry. Barry told the story of how he found you riddled with bullet holes after the fight, and how stressed everyone was before they figured out that you were a metahuman. You let Joe look at the wound in your back so he could see the golden light that visually represented the healing at work, and he was very impressed.

"She can heal other people too, it's really cool to watch." Barry mentioned, and you stretched a bit as the uncomfortable feeling of your body knitting itself back together flared up as it regenerated bone.

"Yeah, but it slows down my own healing, so it's tough to use it. Yesterday I healed some bullet grazes after I got shot, which is probably why it took so long to heal. Plus foreign objects sorta block the process too. Like knives. And bullets." Joe nodded in understanding, placing a hand on your shoulder.

"As an officer of the CCPD, I would like to thank you for helping to keep central city safe, even while you were a little swiss-cheese-ified." That brought a laugh, which made you feel a lot better.

Suddenly, your knight in geeky t-shirts walked through the door, a bag of takeout in his hand.

"As requested, I have brought fries. As for the nap, if the lady of the hour would please follow me, I have a suitable napping place prepared as well." He bowed to you as if you were actual nobility, a cheesy grin plastered on his face. You laughed and stood, doing a little curtsey before padding after him in sock feet.

Cisco brought you to a space you assumed was his, due to the tech strewn everywhere in the room, and guided you towards a couch in the back of it. The couch had a blanket at the ready and pillows in a basket underneath one side table. The couch also faced a small pull-down projector screen, on which it appeared Cisco had been projecting video games.

You sat on the couch and sighed in relief as he handed you the bag of fries. He had also brought you a soda, which you sipped gratefully.

"You, dear Cisco, are my hero." You spoke through a mouthful of fries. He pulled a beanbag chair over towards the couch.

"Wait, this is your couch. You don't have to sit somewhere else if you don't want." You protested, scootching further to the side. Cisco smiled and let go of the beanbag, getting a pillow out of the basket and placing it on the end opposite you.

"You requested a nap, and a nap is more comfortable when you have more couch. It's basic logic." He sat down in his beanbag.

"Wanna watch something or just sleep?"

"Dealer's choice. I'm already planning to sleep on your couch and you bought me fries. It's the least I can do." That made Cisco laugh, but he took you up on that offer. As the streaming service of his choice loaded, he got up and rummaged through the stuff on what seemed to be the primary desk before plucking something from the mess. He brought it over and held it out to you.

It was a necklace, a pendant on a fine silver chain, and the pendant was something set into silver as well. Upon closer inspection, you realized it was a bullet. You tilted your head in confusion.

"I made that. For you. It's one of the bullets Cait pulled out of you yesterday. I thought it might bring you luck or something." Cisco smiled in a very smug fashion as he watched your face turn pink. He helped you put it on, pulling your hair gently over the chain and admiring his handiwork.

"That's probably the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me." You remarked, staring down at it in awe.

After the sweet moment was over and you had finished your fries, you both got comfortable as Cisco turned on an episode of the original Star Trek. He kept the volume low and sunk down into his beanbag. You found yourself resting your head on his shoulder.

"Does this count as a date?" You asked, fiddling with your new jewelry.

"It can if you want it to be." Cisco answered, his voice a little shaky compared to the confident tones of earlier. You sat up just enough to press a soft kiss to his cheek, eliciting a small noise of surprise.

"Good." Cisco reached up to touch his cheek as you laid down and closed your eyes to sleep.

He didn't end up watching much of the episode. Instead, Cisco watched you sleep, your chest rising and falling gently with each breath, and thanking whatever gods he could think of that you hadn't died yesterday as a normal human would.

23 bullets wasn't exactly a fun way to meet someone, but Cisco hoped you thought it was worth it.


End file.
